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Search Continues For Tens Of Millions In Missing Philadelphia Taxpayer Money

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PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The search continues for the disappearance of tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money from City of Philadelphia accounts. Some of the money has been located, but the rest has yet to be, as $27.5 million still remains missing.

Last month, CBS3 reported about $33 million in taxpayer money that disappeared and no one knew what happened to it.

Councilman Allan Domb's mission is to find the money as some $33 million in taxpayer dollars has been misplaced, or even gone missing, from the city's payroll and general disbursement accounts.

"Anyone in business or an individual who doesn't reconcile at the end of the month, let alone 60 days later, has a huge problem," said Domb.

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Domb says that problem started years ago.

"The sad part is we didn't do the job correctly for seven years," said Domb.

Essentially from 2010 until last summer, the city did not reconcile its main cash or payroll accounts, so no one was tracking where the money leaving these accounts actually went.

Last month, Domb directly questioned Treasury Department employees about what caused this problem.

"We didn't reconcile for seven years the payroll account? Why did that happen?" asked Domb.

"Well one, I can't speak to historically as to why, but this is why one of the reasons we have an outside consulting firm coming in," the employee said during the hearing.

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The city hired that consulting firm to clean up the mess at a cost to taxpayers of an additional $500,000.

A spokesperson for Mayor Jim Kenney's office said Monday due to that outside investigation, the amount of unreconciled cash has been reduced to $27.5 million.

Those paying Philadelphia taxes are not too pleased.

"I'm a lifelong resident of the city. I work in the city and this is really disappointing," said Rocco Sciulli.

"It's actually despicable," exclaimed Desati Nyanwleh.

"I'm very resentful about it because we work hard to pay those taxes," said Julia King.

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Treasury officials are expected back in front of Domb and the City Council on Wednesday for an update on how the search for the missing millions is going.

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